What Was
by Willow-Bee the Cat
Summary: Maybe becoming Hermione Granger wasn't the smartest idea Rin had ever had. A look at the beginning of first year. Sequel to What Will Never Be and What Is Parts 1 and 2.


Disclaimer: I neither own nor make a profit from Harry Potter or Naruto

Summary: Maybe becoming Hermione Granger wasn't the smartest idea Rin had ever had. A look at the beginning of first year.

Author's Note: This is the last installment in the What Is And What Will Never Be series. However, I'm seriously considering doing an "alternate universe" story where Kakashi actually tries to find out what happened to Rin when Pakkun claimed she died during the Basilisk fiasco. I'm also considering writing a oneshot or two about Rose Weasley and Sarutobi Hiruzen, but I haven't decided yet. I also might be willing to write a story or two about the young Team Minato or Rin and Obito in the Ninja Academy.

Secondly, I added Sally-Anne and Eloise as roommates for two reasons; if I write that AU story, it will come into play and secondly because as shown in the third book during the boggart lesson, there were ten Gryffindors in Harry's year and it was easiest to add canon female characters to the girl's dorm than the boy's.

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What Was

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It was, she decided, rather like an undercover mission, except far more difficult. There was no team, no backup. Nothing and nobody would rescue her if she broke cover or was discovered. There was nobody her mistakes could endanger. And that was freeing in ways she couldn't quite put into words.

Her cover had been chosen very carefully. Generally, there were anywhere from five to ten Muggleborns who survived long enough to be accepted to Hogwarts, and nobody would notice or care if there was one more than there should have been. Once that had been decided, choosing a name for herself had been easy. Granger had been chosen specifically because it was a job based surname and she could honestly say her father had been in law enforcement. The quill which recorded the names of all those who qualified for Hogwarts had been created when the idea of surnames-and names in general-was still highly fluid. Hermione had been the obvious choice for a given name. Although part of her had to admit she was annoyed that she forged papers and created identities for her "parents" when the Wizarding didn't even care, so long as she had their kekkei genkai, magic.

Nor did it care about how old she actually was-when the quill had been charmed, the Founders hadn't actually cared about the age of the students, only that they were untrained magic users. However as the centuries progressed, eleven had become the standard age of admittance into Hogwarts. When she'd been accepted, Professor McGonagall had merely assumed that she was eleven because any Muggleborn over the age of eleven was either attending a school of magic or if they had chosen not to attend; their memories and magic had been bound so that they could not betray the Wizarding or harm themselves or others with their untrained magic. She'd chosen the September birthday to explain away her size and physical maturity.

It had been slightly harder to choose a persona. Particularly one that she felt she would be able to carry off for as long as she had to. Eventually, she had modeled her personality after that of the stereotypical good student, not realizing until it was too late that while said persona was relatively normal in the elemental countries and even Japan, it was atypical in the United Kingdom. Normal British children rarely did more than what was required by their teachers, even the good students. Unfortunately, it was too late to change her personality, Professor McGonagall had spent the two days in the company of Ri-Hermione, she had to remember she was Hermione now-and the two kage bushin-unusually high chakra reserves were part and parcel of her kekkei genkai-henged to look like her "parents."

Except nothing was working quite like she'd intended it to. The persona she'd chosen was apparently so off putting that only Neville could stand to be around her for longer than absolutely necessary and she could only take being around Neville in small doses. The boy reminded her so much of what Obito was like back in the Academy, back before the war had been any more real to them than their history lessons that it was painful to be around him and Trevor brought up uncomfortable memories of Minato-sensei and his summons. Her roommates made their dislike of her clear-although she supposed her nightmares didn't help.

When Malfoy had confronted her with his little goons after potions class a month earlier, she'd had such a bad flashback that before she realized what she was doing, all three were on the floor, just injured enough that they were no threat while still capable of answering questions. She'd had to use medical techniques-jutsus she'd sworn to herself not to use again-to heal the poor boys and ensure that they didn't remember what she'd done to them.

Hermione supposed it didn't really help matters that she had to spend her time with children so much younger than she was. Admittedly, thirteen was not that much older than eleven, but her classmates were so much more immature than she was. They were civilians in every sense of the word, despite the kekkei genkai. Some, such as Neville were more mature than most, but they were still such… children. Part of it, she supposed was the culture, and part of it was doubtless that she had survived a war, and they had not. Oh, there were still scars from the most recent civil war, but it had ended when her year mates were so young they couldn't even remember it.

Ron's comment had merely been the last straw. Maybe she would not have reacted as she had if Ron had said she was so horrible nobody wanted to be friends with her-called her a failure as a kunoichi; what sort of kunoichi, what sort of shinobi was so bad at acting that they couldn't even successfully pretend to be a civilian?-a week earlier or later, she would not have reacted as she had. Hermione had always hated this time of the year-it was eight years to the day since her mother had perished during what was supposed to be a simple C-Rank mission and she'd been left in the care of her grandparents. Another part of her was horrified that she still thought of herself as a kunoichi. She was a civilian, damnit. A happy, sheltered little civilian girl who'd never experienced anything more traumatic than the death of a grandparent.

Maybe Kakashi was right about her. Maybe she was a coward for turning her back upon the village, for abandoning what was left of her team. Hermione knew that she had run away from the village. Part of her could not help but think that she should go back to Konoha, find work at the hospital-although she refused, absolutely refused to return to the ninja corps. And what would happen to Kakashi without her there to help remind him that he was human? Minato-sensei and Kushina-san were dead-according to Pakun-and without them who would make sure Kakashi was alright? She might not particularly like her former teammate at the moment, but she didn't want him to backslide on all his progress as a person.

And then she reminded herself that Gai had sworn to her that he would look after Kakashi in her absence and Kakashi had promised to look after Gai because she was "worried about him after the loss of his teammates." Kakashi would be fine. He might be a bit angry that she'd made him swear to look after the person she'd entrusted his mental well being to when he found out-and he would certainly find out-but he would get over it eventually. Not to mention that she'd allowed Kakashi to sign her father's family's dog summoning contract. The pack would look after the boy as they'd promised.

"Are you alright?" asked a soft voice-one of her roommates, Sally-Anne Perks. If she was here, then likely their other roommates, Eloise Midgeon, Parvati Patil, and Lavender Brown were as well. The four seemed incapable of doing something so simple as going to the bathroom alone. Sometimes British culture confused her.

"I-I'm fine," said Hermione, trying not to wince at the way her voice had cracked.

"Are you sure?"

"If she wants to be left alone, then leave her be," snapped Lavender. "We'll be late for the feast."

"If you're so hungry, why don't you and Parvati go to the Great Hall," suggested Eloies. "Sally and I will catch up in a bit."

After saying their goodbyes, Parvati and Lavender left the bathroom. Once they were gone, Eloise-judging by the footsteps-approached the stall Hermione had locked herself in. "You shouldn't let what Ron says get to you, Hermione. He's just angry because you're smarter than he is."

"I know," Hermione said softly, wiping at her eyes with a piece of toilet paper.

"Do you want to come to the Great Hall with us?" offered Sally-Anne.

Hermione sniffled loudly, then blew her nose into the makeshift tissue. "No, thank you. I'm not-I'm not ready yet."

Eloise seemed to shift her weight back and forth between her feet. "We could stay here with you if you want."

"No. No. Go have fun at the feast."

"Do you want us to save you a plate of food?" asked Eloise. "We could bring it back to the dorm after the feast."

"Yes, thank you."

"Alright," agreed Sally-Anne. "Do you want us to stay a bit longer or do you want to be alone?"

"Alone, please."

"Ok. We'll see you tonight, Hermione."

"Bye Hermione," called out Eloise as she and her friend left the bathroom.

Hermione waited until she was sure the bathroom was empty before she unlocked the stall and walked over to the sinks. She blew her nose again, then threw out her tissue. Hermione turned on the sink-cold water only-and proceeded to wash her face in an attempt to make some of the evidence of her tears disappear. She patted her face dry with a hand towel and looked up, only to stop short.

She didn't recognize her reflection in the mirror. In the six months since Obito had died, since she'd left Konoha, she'd changed so much. It was a bitter sweet relief not to see the traditional tattoos of her maternal grandfather's clan, upon her cheeks-one red horizontal stripe on each because she was an iryo nin-though she knew they were there, underneath the seals she'd inscribed upon her skin to hide all of her identifying marks. She'd received the stripes when she'd been promoted to Chunin, as was traditional. Even odder still was her hair, which had finally started to grown out of the strict bob grandmother had insisted she keep it in-_when you're a Jonin you may wear your hair however you want_, her grandmother had always said, _but_ _until then I will not have you killed because an enemy used it as a handhold. _Grandmother would have been horrified to see it so long that it touched her shoulders.

Right before she was finally ready to leave the bathroom all hell broke loose. She recognized it as a troll immediately. The hide was too thick for normal weaponry or magic to pierce it. However, even with that disadvantage, it would have been easy enough to take care of. At least until Harry Potter and Ron Weasley ran into the bathroom to rescue her-like she really was some helpless little civilian girl. At least, Hermione supposed, she was not so horrible a person that they would leave her to die. So she did her best to stay out of the way while she tried to figure out how to get herself and the boys out of this mess without any of them dying or the boys finding out about her skills as a kunoichi. The last thing she had expected was for Harry and Ron to knock out the troll without serious injury-yet somehow they had managed to do so.

Hermione decided to take a chance when the professors arrived and lied about exactly what had happened. Either way, neither she nor the boys would really have gotten into trouble, but by making it seem that she was covering for them, she gained their trust, and an offer of friendship.

Maybe she was a coward who'd run away from the village. But she was not a kunoichi, not anymore, and the safety of Konoha was no longer her concern. Perhaps she'd abandoned her teammates, but at least she'd made sure they had people who cared about them, a support system. And she was successful at pretending to be a little civilian girl. It just took a bit more effort than she'd originally believed to make them warm up to her.

And maybe if she pretended hard enough, long enough, she would believe herself to be a civilian girl as well.


End file.
